I’m pleased to announce that the WebFinger specification has now been published as an RFC — RFC 7033. WebFinger enables discovery of information about a user or resource at a host using an HTTP query to a well-known https endpoint, with the discovered information being returned in a simple JSON structure. For instance, OpenID Connect uses WebFinger to discover the location of a user’s OpenID Connect server.
Thanks particularly go to Paul Jones, who tirelessly edited the spec, ably navigating the sometimes thankless task of addressing the numerous and sometimes conflicting comments and suggestions that were made, and in the end, resolving them to everyone’s satisfaction, and in a high-quality manner. Thanks a bunch, Paul!
I’ll also take the occasion to thank Yaron Goland for inventing the Simple Web Discovery specification. I believe that the simplicity of the approved WebFinger specification is a direct result of the influence that Simple Web Discovery had upon WebFinger.
I look forward to seeing all the useful things that will be accomplished using WebFinger!
Mike Jones
Mike Jones